As the demand for green technologies grows, the demand for increasingly efficient light sources has also increased as evidenced by the migration from incandescent light bulbs, to compact fluorescent light bulbs, and now on to Light Emitting Diode light bulbs. While these newly developed light bulbs are more efficient relative to the traditional incandescent light bulbs, they may be far less efficient or more costly than using available sunlight. Thus, different ways of gathering and redirecting sunlight to illuminate the interior of a building have been developed. Consider the following examples:    “Project Summary Report—Daylight in Buildings”, published by the International Energy Agency in 2010;    U.S. patent publication 2010/0254010 to Whitehead et al. titled “Adaptive Sunlight Redirector”, filed Jun. 16, 2008;    U.S. patent publication 2012/0011782 to Kolas et al. titled “Fenestration System with Solar Cells”, filed Sep. 28, 2011;    U.S. Pat. No. 8,027,092 to Huff et al. titled “Curved Light Shelf System for Daylighting an Interior Space”, filed Jan. 21, 2011;    U.S. patent publication 2005/0128728 to Eisenman et al. titled “Light Tube System for Distributing Sunlight or Artificial Light Singly or in Combination”, filed Jan. 7, 2005;    U.S. patent publication 2011/0272002 to Liu titled “Sunlight Collecting System for Illumination”, filed May 3, 2011; and    U.S. patent publication 2006/0013001 to Roth titled “Reflectors for Condensed Light Beam Distribution”, filed Jul. 5, 2005.
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Unless the context dictates the contrary, all ranges set forth herein should be interpreted as being inclusive of their endpoints, and open-ended ranges should be interpreted to include commercially practical values. Similarly, all lists of values should be considered as inclusive of intermediate values unless the context indicates the contrary.
While these and other known references allow redirection of available sunlight from a location (e.g., a window, a roof, etc.) to illuminate the interior of a building, they all exhibit certain limitations. For instance, the locations on which the light collecting/harvesting structures can be mounted are limited to those that receive abundant sunlight (e.g., the roof, the side(s) of the building that faces the sun) throughout the day. Furthermore, the usefulness of the available sunlight received by light collecting/harvesting structures, in terms of its ability to be efficiently introduced into and guided by the light guiding structure, varies throughout the day as the sunlight comes from different directions at different times of the day. As such, there is a need to improve on the existing systems by maximizing the amount of sunlight received by the light guiding structures independent of the locations on which they are mounted.